What is the truth about the infamous Aktion Erntefest at Majdanek?

Erntefest, or Harvest Festival in English, is the title given to the alleged execution of 18,000 Jews in only nine hours on November 3, 1943 at the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, Poland. I wrote about this event on my website, after visiting the Majdanek Memorial Site in October 1998. You can read about it on Wikipedia here.

There has been some discussion in the comments section of my blog about this event. I thought that the famous Erntefest was a proven fact, but others have doubted it.

I finally did a search to find out what Carlo Mattogno has to say about it. I consider Mattogno to be the foremost Holocaust revisionist and the most reliable Holocaust historian, because he seems to me to be completely unbiased. Not that other revisionists are biased, but Mattogno is noted for being completely unbiased.

I found an article here which mentions Mattogno and the famous Erntefest at Majdanek.

The following quote is from the article:

My Italian friend Carlo Mattogno – who is doubtless the world’s foremost expert on the ‘Holocaust’ – and I have decided to do the work all other historians have failed to accomplish. Our book, KL Majdanek. Eine historische und technische Studie has been published in German. (4)

In June 1997, Mattogno and I spent time in Lublin. Our book is essentially based upon the following sources:

– Documents found in Russian archives in 1995 (5);

– Documents found in the archives of Majdanek museum, as well as in the archives of the city of Lublin;

– The Polish literature;

– Practical investigation on the ground of the former concentration camp.

Unfortunately, the documentation about the Lublin camp is by no means as complete as the historian would desire; many documents are missing or were destroyed before the liberation of the camp. Therefore, it would be quite difficult to write a ‘history of Majdanek.’

To mention but one example, we do not know how many prisoners were deported to Majdanek during the almost three years of its existence, and we have to content ourselves with estimates. Still, the extant documents permit us to determine the death figure of the camp with reasonable accuracy and to refute the myth of the homicidal gas chambers as well as the legend of the mass shooting allegedly perpetrated in November 1943.

If Mattogno refutes the “legend” of the mass shooting, that’s good enough for me.

When I visited the Majdanek camp in 1998, I had a private tour guide, who drove me there in her car. The camp was originally built just outside the city of Lublin, but when I visited, the camp was inside the city limits. We were driving down a street, that was a major road in Poland, when all of a sudden, my tour guide said to me: “Look over there. That’s the Commandant’s house.”

Then I saw the huge monument that is very near the road. I was so taken aback that I had a hard time operating my camera, and I didn’t get a good photo of it. I borrowed the photos below.

Monument at Majdanek faces the street

The ashes of the 18,000 prisoners who were allegedly killed are under the dome, shown in the photo below. On the right, in the photo, there is one of the original wooden guard towers. The three objects on the left side are toilets for the tourists, which are the source of a very foul smell.

Ashes under the dome at Majdanek

The point that I am trying to make, in showing the photos above, is that the monuments at the Majdanek Memorial Site are way over the top. I have since learned that the Majdanek camp was not a major extermination camp, and probably not an extermination camp at all.

According to the orthodox ‘Holocaust’ historians, the Germans set up six ‘extermination camps’ in Poland where Jews were systematically murdered in gas chambers. One of these purported extermination centres was Majdanek, near the city of Lublin.

The ‘Holocaust’ historians claim that Majdanek served both as a labour camp and a murder factory. Between September 1942 and October 1943, the Germans are supposed to have gassed large numbers of Jewish prisoners, partly by means of Zyklon-B, partly by means of carbon monoxide. Moreover, the Germans are accused of having shot about 18,000 Jews at Majdanek on November 3, 1943. This was allegedly the beastliest mass murder ever committed in any German concentration camp on a single day.

Tens of thousands of books have been published about the ‘Holocaust.’ One would therefore expect to find an abundance of scientific studies about these six alleged mass murder sites. In reality, the exterminationist historians have almost exclusively focused their attention upon Auschwitz. Much to his dismay, the would-be-student of Majdanek quickly discovers that there is not a single serious book about this camp in any western language!

The original claim, by the Soviet Union, was that 1.7 million people had been killed at Majdanek. Now that figure has been OFFICIALLY reduced to 78,000, including 59,000 Jews. I am ready to concede that the figure for the Erntefest should be reduced, from 18,000, to perhaps 180 prisoners who were killed.

There is a famous photo of prisoners being marched to their death at Majdanek, which you can see at the top of my blog post.

Years ago, when I visited the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, CA, there was a man at the entrance to the underground parking lot, who looked remarkably like the man in the lower left corner of the photo. He was stopping all the cars, in order to determine if it was safe to allow the occupants inside the museum.

Did the man in the photo survive and make his way to Los Angeles, where he is now living the good life in America, like so many other Holocaust survivors? Anything is possible.

If something seems exaggerated, fake or plain ridiculous, it’s because it is exaggerated, fake or plain ridiculous.

Because people have had this rubbish rammed down their throats since the day they were born, it must be true. Coupled with heavy sentences for non-believers who speak out and careers/lives destroyed, holocaustians can say anything they want with impunity, no matter how preposterous.

FG
Following is an extract from one of my Blogs om Majdanek, written by Thomsz Kranz, which I have translated into English, and might be a bit long and boring for some of your readers, if not controversial. You can delete it at your discretion:
‘ACTION HARVEST FESTIVAL’ 3rd November 1943
This massacre was part of the program to exterminate the Jews in the General Government . In the Lublin district alone about 42,000 Jews were murdered on orders of Himmler in several camps . There are many indications that Himmler wanted them eliminated not only for ideological reasons , but also out of a “sense of honour”(Ehrgefühl) . He wanted to prevent the Defence Industry to take over Jewish workers.
Towards the end of August 1943 Globocniks successor Jokop Sporrenberg as SS and Police Leader, received from Himmler the order for the extermination of the Jews. In Majdanek, the camp began preparations for the executions . The Gestapo in Lublin ordered to dismiss the Jewish prisoner functionaries and replace them with “Aryans” . On September 30 , 1943, the resistance movement within the camp reported that “all Jews were to be removed from the Staff Offices, the Postal Service Section and replaced by Poles “. Two weeks later, they informed all, that the camp commander had been suddenly ordered to Berlin and one could look forward to important events in the camp in the coming weeks. This visit (of the Kommandant) took place on October 16, 1943 , two days after the prisoner revolt in Sobibor extermination camp . This uprising accelerated and decided the murder of the Jews in Majdanek . At the end of October 1943, three graves were dug near the crematorium , which were intended as the execution site . On the 2nd November, a meeting was held in the staffroom of Sporrenberg , Martin Melzer attended these discussions as representative of the Commandant of Majdanek.
SEE PICTURE 13/63:http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/galleries/majdanek/Bones%20of%20victims%20of%20the%20Majdanek%20camp,%20in%20a%20cabbage%20patch.html “Bones of victims of the Majdanek camp, in a cabbage patch”
The next morning began the massacre . In just under nine hours around 18,000 Jews were murdered : These were prisoners from Majdanek and its working commandos, inmates from the Lublin located forced labour camps, Jews who had worked at the Lipowa Sraße and Wronka road ( airfield ) . Accompanied with dance music they died under the salvos of the rifles, in the trenches with shots to the back of the head or machine gunned. The next in line had to lie on the bodies of already shot victims. The “Aryan” prisoners were forbidden to leave their barracks. They could therefore not observe the course of the execution. Some of them , however, were eyewitnesses to the murder in the last phase : “I saw the last group of naked people before being shot , there stood a radio van. You could hear the muffled series of shots of machine guns and melodies from the van. The barracks opposite the crematorium through which we were led, was sharply lit and crowded with clothes of the murdered . There were also cases in which the naked (Entkleideten) in the last moments before their deaths had thrown their remnants of valuables such as watches and coins . We witnessed a terrible crime , the SS men were drunk. These experiences I can never forget “. Approximately 100 members of the police and the Security Services carried out the execution , including members of the commandant of the Security Police in Lublin. They were supported from the department of the SS Death’s Head units (SS-Totenkopfverbände) from Warsaw, the local police regiment , 22 men from Krakow and Lublin as well as 25 from the Reserve Police Battalion, 101 from Hamburg. The SS of Majdanek brought the Jews to the fields of the place of execution , and the Camp Guards helped the outer units to hermetically seal off the camp premises. [25 Jews who had succeeded in hiding during the killings of the day before were found and executed. Another 611 prisoners, 311 women and 300 men, were commanded to sort through the clothes and remains of the dead. The men were at first commanded to bury the dead, but were later assigned to Sonderkommando 1005, where they had to exhume the same bodies for cremation. The men were then themselves executed. The 311 women were subsequently sent to Auschwitz where they were gassed. By the end of Operation “Harvest Festival,” Majdanek had only 71 Jews left.sic]
SEE PICTURE 3/63: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/galleries/majdanek/A%20mass%20grave%20uncovered%20at%20Majdanek.html ‘A mass grave uncovered at Majdanek’
After “Operation Harvest Festival”(Aktion Erntefest) prisoners were shot only in isolated cases, mainly individuals sentenced by the RSHA (Reichs Security Department in Oranienberg) to death. In contrast, executions of detainees held at the Lublin castle or in the Lublin region because of partisan actions, increased. According to an memorandum of Hans Frank dated October 2, 1943, persons under suspicion of “attacks on the German construction work in the General Government”, were to be sentenced to death. One of the places of execution was Camp Majdanek. From autumn 1943 to July 1944, on the basis of this arrangement the condemned (without trial) were brought in smaller or larger groups in “death transports” into the camp and shot at the crematorium or in pits located next to it. It is estimated that these executions amounted to about 3,000 victims, including women and children.
SELECTIONS AND MURDER BY POISON GAS
The killings in the gas chambers of Majdanek were held on the orders of Globocnik, who as already emphasized, often used the concentration camp Lublin for his own needs and made ​​it an important element of “Aktion Reinhardt”. The killings by gas was started probably in September 1942. They ended up in the first days of September 1943. The peculiarity in Majdanek in the application shows the use of two toxic gases. Carbon monoxide (CO) and Zyklon B (HCN). The use of carbon monoxide is evidence of the involvement of “Action Reinhardt” in Majdanek as a method of extermination. Zyklon B on the other hand of connection with the murder methods in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. In other words, it was either copied or instructed to be used, on orders of Globocnik.
The gas chambers were set up in a small brick building that was located directly behind the men’s wash-room (No. 41) and far away from the woman’s wash-room (No. 42). The building should have been originally a disinfections facility. During the construction work, probably in August 1942, small changes were made to make it into its new role, to adapt it, to kill people. The building had a protruding roof over it, to the original planned provision, protecting disinfected clothing against rain. However, while the use of the chambers was now intended to exterminate people, it served just as camouflage. The system consisted of four rooms: three chambers and a small annex, the cabin for the SS personnel, in which steel cylinders were stored with carbon monoxide. In the ceiling of one chamber was a shaft connected to an opening to pour the diatomaceous (Kieselgur) earth-bound gas. Apart from that, this chamber, as well as in the adjacent one, pipes were connected to the steel cylinders from the cubicle next to it. In both chambers people were killed by gas.
SEE PICTURE 18/63 http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/galleries/majdanek/Cylinders%20of%20carbon%20monoxide%20placed%20beside%20the%20gas%20chamber%20in%20the%20Majdanek%20camp..html ‘Cylinders of carbon monoxide placed beside the gas chamber in the Majdanek camp’.
For newly arriving transports, the Jewish prisoners were exclusively selected from others. These selections took place mostly on an area next to the woman’s wash-room (Barrack 42) , which was called the rose garden. The description rose garden stemmed from the prickly spines of climbing roses on the fence that surrounded the selection square . [Some sources claim, the Germans named it such, after US President Roosevelt, whom they believed was a Jew.HKS] Larger groups of prisoners were housed prior to selection on Intermediate field II . During 1942, the SS selected only sporadically newly arriving transports because most of them had already run through a pre-selection process at the railway ramp at the airfield . From April to August 1943 almost all incoming transports with Jewish prisoners were subjected to selection one way or other . Especially children, the elderly and sick or exhausted women were gassed in the evening or at night. The next morning their corpses from the gas chamber were incinerated in the camps crematorium or burned on funeral pyres in the Krepiecki forest. Of the 15,000 Jews, from the Warsaw Ghetto deported to Majdanek , 4.000 to 5.000 died in April and May 1943 .
SEE PICTURE 14/63 http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/galleries/majdanek/Building%20No.%2041,%20that%20housed%20the%20gas%20chambers%20in%20the%20Majdanek%20camp..html’Building No. 41, that housed the gas chambers’
From the camp inmates , especially the sick and those unable to work were threatened with death in the gas chamber . In 1942, selections took place regularly, 500 to 600 people died weekly in the gas chambers. In the first months of 1943, selections were held in the camp haphazardly among male prisoners. They increased during a typhoid epidemic. These selections did not concern Jews , rather other prisoners , mostly Poles. They chose especially older , frail and debilitated people for the chambers . 1942 and early 1943 every two weeks selections of patients took place when 30 to 40% of the incurable were selected for the gas chamber . The actions in February and March 1943, when many Poles arrived from the Pawiak jail in Warsaw were among the victims. During the selection at the infirmary, prisoners had to appear before a Commission for assessment , “and the German doctor decided at a glance which patients had to go into the gas chamber” . The killing of sick non-Jewish prisoners at the Majdanek gas chambers was stopped by the end of April / beginning of May. Undoubtedly, this was a consequence of the Himmler order of the 27th April 1943 which stated that within the framework of action ” 14f13 ” only mentally ill prisoners should be liquidated in the future.
SEE PICTURE 24/63: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/galleries/majdanek/Interior%20of%20a%20gas%20chamber%20at%20the%20Majdanek%20camp.html ‘Interior of a gas chamber at the Majdanek camp’

Thanks. This sounds like the official True Believer version of the story.

There are many problems with the official version: The Majdanek camp was on a MAJOR ROAD with heavy traffic. A “death camp” should not be on a highway where millions of people, driving by, can see what is going on.

Lublin was the headquarters for Operation Reinhard which had death camps at Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec, all of which were in remote locations. Why have remote locations if you are going to gas people a few feet from a major road?

The gas chambers at Majdanek were in Building number 41, right next door to Building number 42, which was allegedly used for disinfecting clothes. Tourists are not allowed to see Building number 42.

There was the same arrangement at Dachau where the “gas chamber” (disguised as a shower room) was in the same building with 4 disinfection chambers, which had the word Gaskammer on the door.

There were houses on two sides of the Majdanek camp. The houses were on a hill where people could look down into the camp and see everything going on. On another side of the camp was a cemetery, where there would have been constant visitors going to put flowers on the graves.

Majdanek was the place where clothing taken from the Jews in the Operation Reinhard camps was brought to be disinfected. Could it be that Building number 41 and Building number 42, at Majdanek, were both used for disinfecting clothing.

Building number 41 had a large shower room for male prisoners, and Building number 42, allegedly had a shower room for the female prisoners. Why can’t tourists see the interior of Building number 42?

When I visited the Majdanek site, I found everything there to be ridiculous. There are now tall apartment houses on two sides of the camp. How could anyone live there now if the camp was a “death camp”?

The camp was so close to the city of Lublin that there is now a streetcar that goes past the camp. Inside the camp, the Polish resistance fighters were allowed to put up a tall monument, and there was also a large sculpture of a turtle, made by one of the prisoners. This indicates that the prisoners were treated well, if they were allowed to make large sculptures.

Inside the Museum, there was a display of baby clothes, knitted by the women in the camp. Not only were women prisoners allowed to bring babies into the camp, they were allowed to knit baby sweaters. There was a rosary with beads made out of wadded up balls of bread. They must have had plenty to eat if they were wasting bread to make rosaries.

I saw the inside of one of the barracks buildings; it did not look that bad. American soldiers were living in similar buildings with similar bunks.

I do not share Your esteem for Carlo Mattogno in Italy well know for his hostile attitude toward Jews so, at least, he cannot say to be “wertfrei” when writing on Shoah histpry. Indeed, at November 1943 the entire AKTION REINHARD staff had to leave Poland and go to Italy. So it is credible that before leaving Majdanek and destruct the Gas Chamber the Nazis arranged a mass execution. Clearly, without leaving written documents about that deed. A fact resulted to be helpfull for negationist fault finding so called historians. From above I see that polish autorithies do not pay any respect for the victims of Majdanek, which number can only be conjectured as the Nazis desturcted most of the documents. A certain orders had not been written in the language of Goethe and Schiller but in that of sentencers and executers. “Wir sind nicht im Lamde der Dichter und der Denker sonden in dem der Richter und der Henker”: Clear?

You wrote “So it is credible that before leaving Majdanek and destruct the Gas Chamber the Nazis arranged a mass execution.”

The “Gas Chamber” at Majdanek was not destroyed. The Aktion Reinhard staff did not HAVE to leave Poland, to go to Italy. You are implying that Carlo Mattogo is not credible because he lives “in Italy.”

According to Wikipedia: “Operation Reinhard ended in November 1943. Most of the staff and guards were then sent to northern Italy for further Aktion against Jews and local partisans.”

Note that Wikipedia says that the Operation Reinhard staff had to go to Italy to fight PARTISANS. This is another name for “resistance fighters” also known as “illegal combatants.”

I suspect that the documents at Majdanek were confiscated by the Soviet liberators of Majdanek. How do you know what words were used in these missing documents? The words might have been the words of a poet or a thinker, not the words of a judge and an executioner. You are assuming facts not in evidence.

The words WIR SIND NICHT IM LAND DER DICHTER UND DER DENKER SONDERN IN DEM DER RICHTER UND DER HENKER is quoted by Kogon as said by a Buchenwalld SS officer. Consistent with the sentence of Alois Brunner at Vienna. IHRET WEGEN WERDEN WIR NICHT DEUTSCH LERNEN WIE GOETHE – for your sake we will not learn German like Goethe – told to Benjamin Murmelstein in 1941. We know from the book of Gitta Szereny – interivews with Stangl – that the AKTION REINHARD STAFF left Poland at that time for North Italy catching so Partisan as Antifascist persons and also hidden Jews. I had had already arguments with Carlo Mattogno on an Italian site for his attitude hostile against Jews wihich – unavoidable – has an influence on his researches and conclusions. For the “Soviet Liberators” Majdanek was almost a surprise and Jews not their priority. I believe that the Nazis monts before managed to destruct all documents. Clear?

Wolf Murmelstein wrote: “I had had already arguments with Carlo Mattogno on an Italian site for his attitude hostile against Jews wihich – unavoidable – has an influence on his researches and conclusions.”

Are you implying that the researchers with a friendly attitude toward Jews are biased and unreliable because of their love for Jews? Or is your reasoning only valid for the researchers with a hostile attitude (or claimed to be so) toward Jews?

Your argument makes me think that all the Jewish historians writing about the “Holocaust” should be regarded suspiciously because of a very probable big bias (due to their love for the Jewish people and the Zionist myth of the “Holocaust”). Do you agreed on that? Or is that only valid for the antisemitic or supposedly antisemitic researchers? 😉

From my bitter personal experience I note that Shoah History is a difficult matter. Many USA historians – and I blame Yourself too – ignore European hisotry,, geography amd demography. I had been able to discuss with Germans and Austrians, even with persons who in WWII stood at the other side because they have the necessary knowledge of things and events. A historian who repeats the “deicide” accusation – the century long base of persecustions – is looking – inavoidable – for reasons to deny in the worst fault findig attitudre.
Many Jewish writers of the matter wrote about personal experiences. The best USA Jewish historian had been late Lucy Davidowitch and very much material can be found in the work of Raul Hilberg even having an unfriendly attitude -personal reasons .- toward Benjamin Murmelstein, the withness mever heard. I am in touch with German historians who are working on a project of Genrel History of Nazi rule in Europe and the Shoah as part of the Hitler policy. i wonder what do You know in USA about Europe and what the famed universities of … are teaching. i am afraid there is a great lack. For Shoah history a sound knoledge of German is a must. in order to understand the Nazi way to express things and report events. Clear?. .

I once met a man on a bus while I was in Europe. He was speaking French to one of the passengers. Then he turned to me and began speaking in English. He had apparently recognized me as an American. Then he turned to a German man and began speaking German. I was completely amazed at this. Not only could he speak 3 languages, he spoke all three languages correctly, as far as I could tell.